XMas

It was bitter cold Sunday morning. It was so cold so that I had to drive to Sunday lunch rather than walk. And today is as bitterly cold as it was yesterday. At least there has been no icy rain, but that will change tomorrow.

Still, it is the XMas season, a time for gifts, for shopping (both a lot less than in past years for obvious reasons), for cards, and for decorated Yule trees — like mine on the left.

The other XMas tree I took with me when I moved to the new house burned out a single bulb, which rendered the whole tree useless. So I bought this one, and gathered the decorations piecemeal. Some I bought (silver ornaments), some I already had (pillowcase around the base of the tree), some the folks gave me (star, tinsil, cloth angel). The gifts at the base are my gifts to my family, which will have to the folks’ house after they wrap their gifts.

tech support / folks

In the meantime I have installed security (anti-virus/anti-malware/firewall) software on my folks’ computers. I also gave the wireless router a more recognizable name so that Padre would not be thrown when he sees the name of his own network. Now I need to connect the new printer to the network so that the laptop can print, too.

tech support / self

But first, there has been trouble with my Internet connection since I switched to the Linksys WRT54GL router. I use PPPoE with my user name and password under the Setup tab, and press the Connect button under the Status tab to get a connection. (I did this because DHCP does not work.) That works most of the time. Sometimes I have to turn the router and DSL modem off, then turn them back on (modem first) to get a connection. But for the past couple of days, none of this works at all, and I have therefore been without a DSL connection.

I have discussed this via chat with one of the technicians at Frontier Tech Support. It seems he has narrowed it down to either the line outside or some network component here. It was suggested that I try contacting Frontier Tech Support when I was at my computer.

Later that evening I contacted Frontier Tech Support at my home box, which (as luck would have it) was connecting to the Internet. I gave the technician the go-ahead to access my modem through my computer; but he could not reach the modem. He then suggested that I access it myself at a given local address. I could not do with through the router; and doing so directly from my home box network card lost me access to the Internet — and broken the chat session.

It was restored a short time later, but then it was broken again when I accidentally unplugged the power cord from that dumbass modem. I plugged it back in, but in the two or three seconds that past, the chat session was broken.

I gave it one more go. This session was a lot more helpful. It was decided to put in a problem ticket to have someone local check out the line from outside tomorrow afternoon; then I can check the results from here later.

medical friday

On Friday I was compelled to stay home due to a morning ice storm. In the afternoon I visited my doctor, who said I was doing fine apart from the weight gain helped along by my new prescription drug.

Then I took Isis to the vet. It was confirmed that Isis did lose a couple of pounds. That’s irony for you: The cat loses weight; I do not.

Anyway, the vet gave me another drug to feed to the cat. It diminishes her back pain and helps her move about better. The regiment is twice a day for a week, then once a day for a week, then every other day until the drug is gone, right around mid-January.

Feeding her the dope is tricky. No cat likes to have ill-tasting stuff fed to them through a syringe. Isis is a sport about it, but she does drool some of the stuff out, even when I slowly feed it to her. So I learned to bring a paper towel to catch the excess.

The drug seems to be working inasfar as Isis can move about easier, and can even make it onto the couch from the ramp I made out of an unused bulletin board. Also, the vet took a blood sample for testing; I should get the results Tuesday.